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Just as the solar world was preparing for a close call with an asteroid, a meteor ends up exploding in air over Russia, injuring 1,000 people. It was the equivalent of detonating about 300 kilotons of TNT, according to some experts. Martin Archer is a space physicist at Imperial College London:

"This is a complete cosmic coincidence. 12 hours distance between this meteor hitting in Russia and when we're expecting DA-14 2012 to come. That's a massive difference when it comes to space objects."FULL POST

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It's no Armageddon, but the planet will have a close encounter with an asteroid on Friday. Luckily it will miss the earth by about 17,200 miles. Still, that's considered close by many astronomers.

But how concerning is this event and what would happen if the unthinkable should occur? Dr. Bruce Betts of the Planetary Society, the world's largest space interest group, says this could be more common than most might think:

[3:15] "2012 DA14 [the Asteroid] is a close reminder that we do live in this cosmic shooting gallery."

According to NASA, 9,672 objects have been classified as Near Earth Objects. But Bill Nye the Science Guy says there are more out there. Nye is the CEO of the Planetary Society which provides grants to astronomers around the world to help find these asteroids:

[1:01] "We've been doing it over 15 years. The thing about this is that it takes a long time, it takes very diligent people to find these things. They're very small compared to, say, the earth. And they're like pieces of charcoal – they don't reflect very much light."

Although the timing of the asteroid fly by and the meteoric explosion that happened in Russia Friday morning is eerie, NASA says the two events are unrelated.